The WAC Enhances Their Members’ Experience with ResortSuite

The Washington Athletic Club (“The WAC”) was founded in 1930 and over the last 85 years has become not only an iconic landmark of the Seattle skyline, but also one of the most prestigious clubs with one of the highest memberships in North America. The WAC has received the 5 Star Platinum Club of America award every year since the award’s inception in 1997, and in 2014 was named the best athletic club in Washington State and one of the top five nationally.

Paul Lowber

The 21-story clubhouse houses a 109-room boutique hotel for members and guests, three restaurants, a full-service day spa and wellness center, as well as state-of-the-art fitness facilities.

In 2006, The WAC found itself in a predicament when looking to replace their antiquated property management system. Speaking with Paul Lowber, CFO of the Washington Athletic Club, he says he remembers having to decide if they would stick with standalone systems across the property for Membership, Hotel, Spa, Fitness, F&B, Group Catering and Retail or if they should look to replace everything with a fully integrated system. “We liked the idea of a single member database across the property, rather than silos of information,” Paul explains. After an extensive RFP process, The WAC selected ResortSuite to manage all of their major operations on property including memberships, hotel, restaurants, spa, catering, and retail. “The robust Oracle platform ResortSuite runs on, the single member database, and its capabilities in each module were key attributes in our final decision. We knew we would be one of ResortSuite’s first large private city club clients, but we had executive commitment from Frank Pitsikalis (ResortSuite Founder & CEO) and the team to work together to continue improving the system to serve like-minded companies.” Throughout the past nine years, Lowber says streamlining The WAC’s multiple areas of operation has increased efficiency amongst staff, and that ResortSuite continues to make significant improvements to its product with each passing year.

ResortSuite’s integrated system easily handles all the WAC’s areas of operation including memberships, hotel, restaurants, spa, catering, and retail.

Since The WAC went live with ResortSuite in 2007, ResortSuite has made major inroads into the high-end private club world, continuously enhancing modules like ResortSuite CLUB, SPA and GOLF to be considered best-in-class systems, yet fully integrated with the rest of its powerful suite.

With a count of over 12,000 members in their rolls including Olympic athletes and politicians, The Washington Athletic Club continues to strive to provide the best in personalized member service. The WAC very recently launched their new website and using the ResortSuite WEB booking engine, members are now able to look up real-time availability and book a room online as well as view their member statements through the Member Portal. “We love that our members are now able to authenticate themselves online to make room bookings and view their historical and real-time member statements. We look forward to customizing the booking engine and including additional booking functionality,” says Lowber. “Our goal is to continue to learn and train our staff in order to utilize ResortSuite to its fullest potential, both now, and as our club moves into the future, and realize our vision of providing exceptional and personalized member service.”